Big Data: buzzword.  Who cares?  What’s next? As much as this term has been hyped in recent months, Big Data doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.  So as we settle into the Big Data era, it’s time to break it down and put it to work.   And that’s exactly what the Strata conference sets out to do, hosting three data science events throughout the year.

This week marked the first of Strata’s annual events, with a conference in Santa Clara.  Our crew was there with theCube, broadcasting live interviews and analysis throughout the three-day affair.  There were three main topics we looked for at Strata: how is Hadoop being implemented in the enterprise; does the world need yet another Hadoop distro; and can powerful influencers in the Big Data world, like Google and Amazon, conquer the Big Data market with enterprise solutions?

Over the course of Strata we heard from some of the industry’s greatest thought leaders, from the man behind the event Tim O’Reilly himself, to one of Big Data’s earliest contributors, William Bain.  We learned from some interesting perspectives on Big Data implementation, spanning performance and security with Intel’s headline-making move into the Big Data space.  And the Hadoop War is going strong with several product announcements in the past few days, though Strata organizer Allistair Croll feels the “bickering” amongst Hadoop distros is detrimental.

As security gains a more prominent role in this Big Data era, breaches like that of an Iranian hacker group shed light on the issues, circling back to the importance of baking in  security as Intel has done with its Hadoop-empowered chip, unveiled at Strata this week.

To see all of our broadcast recordings from Strata, check out the playlist below.  And be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay on top of the most innovative developments in Big Data.